Kill Bill Vol. 1 Review

That Tarantino, whatta guy. Just when you're ready to write him off as a has-been after all these years without a film, he shows up with this outrageous Kill Bill jive.

This film crystallizes something I'd always suspected about QT: he makes cool films. I don't mean like, "I saw Scary Movie 3, y'know, it was cool." I mean, cool. Cool the way the term originally meant, before it got horribly de-valued. Cool the way Brando was cool in The Wild One. Cool like Steve McQueen in Bullitt. Cool that's dangerous, that the squares can't handle.

You see this level of coolness all over Tarantino's writing and directing, but especially in the way he creates indelible characters. Reservoir Dogs's Mr. White was cool. Jules Winfield from Pulp Fiction was cool. Jackie Brown was supercool.

Uma Thurman's The Bride beats 'em all. She is 50 gallons of ass-kicking in a one-liter bottle. She is an angry, sword-swinging vengeful banshee of death. She inhabits a world where you can carry katana swords on airplanes, and no one in the Japanese Mafia carries any weapon invented in the last 300 years. She's been hurt bad (a gut-wrenching scene when she wakes up from her coma to discover there's no baby in her tummy anymore, and the camera stays on her hysterical crying face for what feels like an eternity to show you what 'hurt' really means), and if you're a member of Bill's Deadly Viper Assasination Squad that double-crossed her on her wedding day, then she's gonna hurt you right back.

This movie is ultraviolent - let's get that out of the way right now. It's style is grounded in the same reality as the old Shaw Brothers chop-socky films and animes like Fist of the Northstar, which is to say, not "reality" at all. 60 gallons of blood gush out of every wound. People jump ten feet in the air. Mobs with weapons will surround the Bride, then attack one at a time until they're all dead. You will laugh harder at the limb-hackings and beheadings in this film than at any joke in any Adam Sandler movie.

Performances - what's not to like? Uma, Lucy Liu, Darryl Hannah in another of Quentin Tarantino's patented Career Resurrection roles, and the extremely scary Disembodied Voice of David Carradine. And SONNY FREAKIN' CHIBA!

Direction - Beautiful. Every shot's ripped off of another movie, completely unapologetically. From the overhead-looking down tracking shots of Brian DePalma to the rapid zoom-in facial close-up from every kung-fu film EVER. It's all there and all awesome.

Script - There is none. To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs, who needs a bunch of plot getting in the way of the story? Seriously, if you come to this looking for comedic banter a la Jules and Vincent, fuggedaboutit. There's no time for banter, just time for vengeance.

Music - By The Rza. Great pastiche of Kung Fu movie incidental music, Sergio Leone spaghetti western scores and hip hop.

Rating - 4 Stars out of 4. Go park your ass in front of a screen for a few shows. When your ass goes numb from sitting too long, command your big toe to wiggle.